We arrived in Rangirao several days ago. Our overnight passage was mostly uneventful excepting some large freighters Dana had to keep a close eye on at night. Mark took over around 6am and navigated toward the entrance to the atoll, waking Dana as he was taking the sails in and preparing to enter. Dana stood on the bow looking for any obstructions and trying to give Mark an idea of currents we were running into. She was distracted, however, by some large dolphins gracefully loping alongside us. We went through and arced to the anchorage area in front of another one of the bungalow-hotels we've been running into.

Finally, we were in a calm anchorage with neither heavy winds nor surges. It was calm and peaceful, with occasional showers sweeping through. With our previous anchorage in mind, we looked for a nice sandy area to drop our hook into. Dana took a nap while Mark caught up on internet stuff and we headed out in our dinghy.

This is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, atolls in world. You can't see the other side of the atoll as it is well beyond the horizon, so this was like being in a sea within a sea.

We went to the west side of the entrance to find the gendarmerie so we could check in with them, as our guide book said to do. The community had a nicely enclosed public wharf with kids playing in the water. Unfortunately, the gendarmerie was not where our guide said it was. So we walked around and explored. The land forming the edge of the atoll was about 1/4 mile across with several blocks of houses and cement roads between them. It was around 2pm so the few stores were all closed except for a snack bar where we got a coke to share... the sun was merciless. Mark asked about the gendarmerie in his broken French and we got some vague directions to another part of the atoll.

We headed back toward the boat and motored into a dive shop to ask about the diving opportunities. Marco gave Mark a special deal and we signed up for a dive the next day. He also directed us to a restaurant further down the atoll which took us 15 minutes to get to. This was a smaller hotel with a snorkle area and small pier we tied our dinghy to. Unfortunately, the restaurant didn't open until 7pm, when it would be well past dark. That was a problem as there were coral patches that we needed daylight in order to avoid and we hadn't even brought our headlamps. They said we were near the gendarmerie, which wasn't really true as we found out after a 1/2 hour (each way).hike, but it was nice to get the check-in over with. We went back to the hotel and enjoyed a couple of drinks.

As with the hotel on the previous island, you ordered mixed drinks piecemeal which is still kind of strange to us. For a gin and tonic, you order a glass with a dash of gin in the bottom and a can of tonic you then mix in. While this system made some sense, it was getting a bit pricey as the gin might be $6 and the tonic might be $4. Mark was getting good at conserving his tonic cans so he would be able to stretch them across multiple drinks. We enjoyed a couple of drinks at this Hotel Mai Tai, though this had a distinctly different feel from the "honeymoon hotels" we had been at before on other islands. The clientele was distinctly older and not so well preserved. We reviewed the menu and were tempted to stay for dinner, if not for the nightmare dinghy ride that would have entailed. So it meant we had to resort to BBQ steaks back on the boat.

The next day, Mark and Dana went to the dive shop. We were exactly sure about the timezone as some places are offset by 1/2 hour so we went a little early. Mark got set up for his dive while Dana waited for a van to come pick her up for a pearl farm tour she had signed up for. Mark went on his dive, the high point of which was sitting on bottom at 50ft with the other divers as 10-15ft sharks came in to check them out. They did not decide to eat us, however. The rest of the dive was only ok, however. Some trumpet fish and large schools of various other small fish came by. On returning, Mark found that Dana had never been picked up by the pearl farm tour; later, we found there was some confusion about which dive shop they were to pick her up at. Mark decided he had enough diving and didn't want to leave Dana to her own devices for another couple hours and backed out of the second dive he had signed up for.

Back on the Northfork, we took a chisel and mallet to the chicken in the freezer so we could separate several from the block. Dana set to work on the first of her banana-based baking operations, as we listened to happenings on the VHF. The Kittiwake was on its way into the atoll. However, on the way from Manihi, its engine had stopped working. So they had heaved to outside the atoll the previous night, waiting until the next day for the gendarmerie to assist an entrance into the atoll. While the winds were quite favorable at the entrance, they had sensibly decided it wasn't worth the risk trying to go through just under sail power and without any kind of backup. Another couple on the SV Quest was already near the entrance in their dinghy as additional assistance, we all we did was call Kittiwake and let them know we were ready to provide any additional help they might need.

Finally, we saw the Kittiwake coming into the atoll under full sail and curve around and tack into our anchorage. The gendarmerie boat and Quest's dinghy were nearby. Apparently, they had not been towed, although they had fenders on one side if the gendarmerie needed to pull up alongside and help them for some reason. Kittiwake was not having a good day, as they had lost the use of their generator earlier, so without their engine they didn't have anyway to recharge their batteries or run their freezer. Not good. We stopped by several times to check in with them, though somehow kept on missing them.

The next day, we spent much of the morning cleaning the hull and starting to wax the Northfork. It was about time to start this and the anchorage was ideally suited as there weren't too much wind/waves to interfere.

Afterward getting off to a good start, we set off to find a letter box Dana had read about on the internet. Letter boxing is something our friend Craig had put us onto. Basically, people have put boxes in all sorts of cool places and people find out about them and go to them. The box includes a book and a stamp and you come with your own book and stamp and mark the box's book with your stamp and stamp your book with the box's stamp. When we got to the letter boxes location, we were disappointed to find the site was very poorly chosen as there were a bunch of construction materials and it was close to the sea so there was a great deal of erosion. After a half hour of looking, we gave up on the box and decided it had been washed away in a storm.

Coming back, we stopped at a small bar for a beer and burgers. While eating lunch, we met the crew from the Magic Bus, who asked if we could tow their dinghy back to their boat for them. Their outboard had broken down and they were not looking forward to rowing back to their boat. Of course, we gave them a tow and they invited us to share a beer on their boat. As the Magic Bus itself had had problems with its engine on its Pacific crossing and the Kittiwake had helped organize some help at its first island, we decided to make another attempt to swing by the Kittiwake and see how things were going, but missed them again.

Back at the Northfork, Dana went to work on another banana concoction while Mark set about emptying all our diesel jerry cans into the tank. We decided we didn't need the full cans sittings on the deck any more and it was time to stow them into one of our lazarettes. We had only used 1/3 of the Northfork's diesel tank on the crossing and hadn't touched the jerry cans at all. With no further crossings of that size facing us, we figured there was no need having all this diesel sitting around and getting in our way. Then it was time to BBQ some more chicken and look forward to Dana's Banana Swirl Cake for desert.